The B-Side: The Adventure of the Dying of Happiness Detective - Angst
by Iwantthatcoat
Summary: "That jump was the happiest day of my life, John. It was a glorious moment. I planned it out so carefully. But it got so much better, John... so much better!" The other "Dying" is crack. This one is h/c and angst. Can be read separately. When I read the prompt (Sherlock confuses happy and sad and wins the lottery) I thought..crack! Then I thought... oh no, what if it was real?
1. Return

Sherlock was half in the door and half out of it, clinging to the frame, reeling from his recent contact with John's fist. The only thought running through John's head continued to be "What the hell?"

Studying the look of utter confusion on Sherlock's face, John had a startling epiphany. The man had seriously thought he would be happy to see him. Happy... happy that this man who had killed himself right in front of him... in front of Ihim/I, mind you: a doctor who had been helpless to save his comrades-in-arms, a colleague who had been at Sherlock's side through thick and thin, a warrior who had bloody well killed a man to save Sherlock from... another, slightly different, form of suicide (How had he missed that aspect before?). And Sherlock had not only jumped, but had done it as he looked up from the street, powerless. While talking to him. And even if that was somehow required of John, for Sherlock to have faked his death and for him to have been a witness to it...he had not said a word, wrote a letter, sent a secret code or something, Ianything/I, ...nothing- until showing up in a melodramatic heap on his doorstep. Here he was, strolling back into his life, expecting a joyous reception.

As Sherlock stood there searching for words, John's mind filled in the missing dialogue:

_"__I am not dead. I am, in fact, very much alive. Why shouldn't that make you happy?"_

_"You selfish git! Is that all the depth your brilliant brain can conjure up concerning human emotion? 'You thought I was dead! I'm alive! Be happy?'"_

_"Why shouldn't you be happy, John? I had a brilliant plan. Fooled everyone. Let me tell you how I did it..." _

John scowled. Now he had to try to explain to the said-same selfish git all that he had gone through... all the pain and betrayal. That was Sherlock all over. But instead of seeing a gloating megalomaniac staring at him from the doorframe, he saw a man with tears running down his face.

"That jump was the happiest day of my life, John. It was a glorious moment. I planned it out so carefully. But it got so much better, John... so much better! I'm sorry John, it's just that seeing you again is... it's so sad. I don't know if I can handle it. Forgive me for coming home. Forgive me, but I just had to."

John was stunned. Everything about this was wrong. The words. The cadence. His voice itself. How deathly ill he looked in the fluorescent light of the flat. Everything.

"But, I know that the last few years have been very happy ones for you, too. I've been watching you. The loneliness that you feel. The anger at me. I've been enjoying myself, too...taking out Moriarty's team. I've gone without food for days at a time and had to sleep out on the snowy mountainside. I've never felt more elated in my life, but I know life is not just endless joy, it is also sorrow...now that I'm back."

Nothing he said had made sense. Sherlock's handling of emotion had always been a bit, well, perverse, but John knew he must be in some form of shock... and here he had just decked a man who had clearly been traumatised, perhaps for years.


	2. Here

Clearly, he had always been a bit of a dick. That was reality. That was... just Sherlock? Usually, it was a defence mechanism, like when Donovan called him a freak and he went off on her...interests...rather publicly. But before the jump, John had been noticing a bit of a change. Sympathetic to a suicidal Henry Knight at Baskerville. Calling out for aid for the school director after he had already gotten the information he needed from her and then taking the time to explain why his actions had been so abrasive. Concern for the children after their kidnapping ordeal had ended.

His complete inability to anticipate John's feelings and his odd emotional reaction seemed far worse than anything he could have anticipated. Pathological.

"Sherlock, where were you? Mountains? Not London, then. France?" John broached the subject carefully, not knowing what he might hear next.

"Moran, Moriarty's right-hand man, found me outside of Tibet, or maybe I found him? The cave was near a monastery, and the man who found me was very kind, or ... perhaps very cruel. I no longer know which. He couldn't rescue me, but he did help keep me alive. He taught me how to process things differently. How to... well it wasn't good at first I think, but then it got much better, my time with Moran. Eventually, I found a way out and back home. I'm sorry John, I know it makes you sad, but it makes you a bit happy, too. I'm sure it does."

John's phone let out a single beep. A text from Mycroft:

_I can only assume he has headed to you. I had hoped to have a more definite prognosis before he left Baskerville, but he refused to stay, and they could not hold him. Remnants of neurotoxin from his last encounter with the facility may have left him particularly susceptible to what I can only suspect is a form of neurological reprogramming. He appears to confuse positive and negative emotions. -MH_

John texted simply:

_He is here_


	3. Aversive Stimuli

_Sherlock knew some anatomy. Pain was essentially an alarm system, designed to warn the body. He was well aware of transduction...activating the nociceptors, travelling along the peripheral nerve to the dorsal horn of the spinal chord and on to the thalamus, hypothalamus, anterior and parietal cungulum. If disease or trauma damages the transmission mechanism, it can cause neuropathic pain...making the pain-alarm continually fire without cause. The periaqueductal gray of the midbrain could inhibit the activity of nociceptive neurons in the dorsal horn...in effect shutting the pain off._

John buried himself in research studies. Early findings of Dr. Robert Heath on stimulating various parts of the brain directly to trigger pain and pleasure responses (back when you could grab a handful of patients from the darkest corners of a mental institution and research whatever the hell you wanted on them). He wondered if some form of this had been attempted on his friend. He shuddered to think about how he had described his experiences with Moran as becoming more and more "happy" ones.

Leknes and Tracy had concluded that pain and reward-processing are in the same area of the brain. Striata dopamine neurons, (pleasure centers, essentially)... could be inhibited during exposure to aversive stimuli. _Aversive stimuli_- such a nice euphemism for torture. He closed his eyes and felt his chin sink into his chest.

Sherlock's misinterpretation of signals might be indicative of damage to the receptors themselves, rather than the neural pathway, or ... had Sherlock tried to create some primitive form of biofeedback himself to influence the pathways, having no other options?

Sherlock was getting better in some ways... eating and drinking, certainly... and was putting all his trust in John. John, meanwhile, did what he could to ensure his physical healing, if not psychological. Though Sherlock seemed more and more like himself, he was unable to process strong emotions. The stronger the feelings of joy, the more likely he was to react to them with depression and lethargy, sometimes completely withdrawing from his surroundings.

John tried to remind himself that Sherlock had done so in the past as well - withdrawing- so maybe he was improving? This notion entirely failed to cheer him. Sherlock had always seemed rather manic...bouncing from the highs of a case to a steady sulk, but John had always chalked that up to a bit of undiagnosed manic depression. He had even tentatively brought up the topic once, and Sherlock had grunted, perhaps in affirmation, defending his choice to keep himself free of any and all medications. John had assumed it was due to a combination of his past struggles with addiction as well as a negative experience with anti-depressive medications. Certainly common enough. He had decided he would bring it up in the future if his periodical sulks ever got truly out of hand.

Now he thought of Sherlock's behaviour shortly after arriving at Baskerville, and couldn't help but wonder if it had been the start of something worse... something that he had neglected to track carefully. He didn't know which to root for... lingering nerve damage he failed to notice, or his friend attempting to free himself from the pain of long term torture. He'd hope for whichever would be easiest to recover from. There was no room for guilt


	4. Equilibrium

As eating held no special pleasure for Sherlock, he seemed to regain both weight and physical strength rapidly. Cases were another matter. Even though his perceptive abilities remained sharp, his emotional reactions were often devastating. A good puzzle would leave him depressed and sullen, while a visit from Mycroft was far more pleasant than it had any right to have been, as annoyance was often displayed as amusement. Mycroft, noticing this, only visited once.

John explained it all to Sherlock... how his emotional reactions were essentially backwards. Sherlock grinned, marvelled at his brain's ability to adapt, and hoped for the best. John wasn't at all sure what to make of that. He told John as he grew stronger and felt safer, perhaps he would be able to reprogram some of his thought patterns. Isolate key damaged receptors. Adjust chemical balances. But for the time being, he remained grateful for his ability to function... optimistic, but his own hope wore him out. John wondered if, translating his juxtaposition of emotions, that meant he had little hope, in actuality.

"I'm, pleased," he said with some hesitancy, "that I am able to limit it to strong emotions and limited reactions. I can still recognize differences...such as between despair and rage. I would have thought that love was a form of happiness, and would have been transformed into hatred. Apparently, it is far more than that, and is not subject to reversal."

John was unsure if he was hearing this correctly. Did Sherlock just imply that he felt love toward him? Part of him cautiously rejoiced in the possibility. The other part wondered if he'd ever felt quite so grateful for Sherlock's ability to blunt his emotional reactions. It made communication possible.

After a week, he did some experiments. Dull ones. Many had no definite purpose except to see if he could complete them. Astronomy and probability figured prominently. Chemistry was off limits; it would leave him completely exhausted, and there had even been a "bounce-back" effect of joy, which John correctly interpreted as complete and utter sorrow. The swings made him far more mercurial than even Sherlock himself had tolerance for. John was convinced he was pushing too hard.


	5. lottery

Then there was the lottery tickets.

Sherlock had had some lottery tickets on his mantle for some time now. Fake ones, given to him from a fellow student at Uni who was more preoccupied with magic tricks than his labs. He only did a trick for Sherlock once, and had learned a rather harsh lesson, avoiding him after having had it thoroughly explained to everyone in the room- even improved upon. As a rather pathetic attempt at revenge, he had tried to pass them off to Sherlock as real. That they were fake was obvious.

Sherlock had found them nearly a decade later, stuck in a Chemistry text, and had pinned them to the mantle with his correspondence and returned to his search for a potential solvent.

He noticed them yesterday while clearing the room a bit, under the influence of John's rather erroneous theory that the state of one's surroundings could have an effect on the state of one's mind. He examined the tickets, and wondered. What were the odds of winning, really? He was only vaguely interested. His face reflected the all too common smirk, which was becoming his trademark lately, as he hit upon something with the right interest-to-boredom ratio which kept him able to pursue a project. A frown turned into a smile turned into a frown again in quick succession.

He bought a pack of one hundred tickets...50 randomly generated numbers purchased from 50 random locations, and 50 with numbers which he determined by painstakingly analysing the winning numbers so far this year and ruling out the ones that had appeared too many times... then ruling out locations to buy them, choosing only stores that had not yet had a major prize winner.

John couldn't hide his frustration. Yes, experiments were very good. Anything that kept him flexing his brain. But £100 worth of lottery tickets? Sherlock was sad, which, of course, meant he was happy. Not overwhelmingly so. Just at the prospect of a new course of study. Sherlock chose the Health Lottery, (since math wasn't his strong suit, and there were only 5 numbers to choose out of a potential 50). In addition, the money went to "health-related good causes", so Sherlock insisted John should be less annoyed. "Charitable," he had said. It actually did help his attitude, not because he was wasting his money on tickets which would fund health causes, but because Sherlock had bothered to think of his feelings on the matter. While still buying the tickets, of course.

John admitted he did find it somewhat intriguing. He had always been a bit of a gambler, plus it reminded him of a play he had seen with an old girlfriend about flipping a coin multiple times and constantly getting heads. Or was it tails? And the characters discussing if it was proof that each flip of the coin was truly a 50:50 shot each and every time. Was there truly an equal chance of having 1-2-3-4-5-6 as the winning numbers as there was with any other combination? Why is it never 1-2-3-4-5-6 then? Should someone choose 1-2-3-4-5-6 if it never has happened before?

The next morning at breakfast, Sherlock was tallying the percentage of matching numbers against his picks when he looked up at John.

"John, I ...won."

"What? No!"

"Yes. £100,000."

John was stunned.

"It worked John! My methodology...the patterns and the grid..it... it worked. I can still...and... the... " Sherlock fought a wave of grief, and John rushed to hold him, which only seemed to make it worse. The more he comforted him, the more Sherlock collapsed into his arms, burying himself in John's neck, body shaking as he alternated between joy and despair.

"Sherlock! Sherlock! It's alright. It doesn't matter. I knew if there was any type of system you'd find it. I knew it back when you jokingly offered me the winning lottery numbers in exchange for a pack of cigarettes when Henry Knight came here.

Mentioning Henry Knight didn't help things- the case that might very well have started him down this path of neurological damage.

"It's getting better, Sherlock. It is. You can work, you can find your way around it. It's getting less severe, and, well, now, with the money, I guess I can take some time off from work, too. Maybe travel a bit to find new approaches, talk to more people."

Sherlock collapsed on the couch, drained, whispering his thanks before curling into a ball and losing himself in the patterns of the weave of the pillow. He frowned, then smiled. He and John would conquer this together.


End file.
